


Not Quite Redemption, But the Best We Can Offer

by Azure_Lynx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A slow evolution of characterization, Bendemption, But loves and believes in him, Character Study, Gen, He is a brat but hey he's trying, Rey is sick of his shit, Sort Of, That wasn't a redemption arc it was just a disappointment, The JediStormPilot is background but it's there, so here we go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22533262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azure_Lynx/pseuds/Azure_Lynx
Summary: He doesn't die.When you weigh his life on the scales, the evils he committed will always outweigh the good. But that's not a reason to not try to be good, at least, even if he doesn't really know what that should look like.
Relationships: Ben Solo & Original Character(s), Ben Solo & Temiri Blagg, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	Not Quite Redemption, But the Best We Can Offer

He doesn’t die. 

He wants to, thinks he will, pours the last of his life into her body and thinks finally, finally he can be free. But she looks at him with eyes that say death is too easy and she drags him out of the darkness and onto her ship and back to the mother he thought he’d never see again, or at least back to her body growing cold because of him, and he lives.

He is more sad than he has any right to be, lost and drifting on the edges. Everyone around him celebrates the fall of everything he’s worked on for years, but he can’t celebrate. He can’t weep, either. He just...is. 

The girl is the only one who gives a damn about him. He doesn’t blame them. The pilot, the little boy he was friends with in another life, is broken beyond belief because of him, flinches and hurries away whenever he makes eye contact. The defector will step in front of the pilot, protectively, but he also trusts the girl and tries to be at least civil.

They all use the name he chose for himself. Except the girl, who calls him what his mother did, named him after an old man who saved her life and died while doing it. He thinks, sometimes, about how his battle with his old master was an inverse of the way his mother always describes that man’s death. 

He doesn’t like to think.

\---

He eats by himself in a room that is his. He had been surprised it wasn’t a cell, but then, he supposes she’d never let that happen. She’d had faith in him from the beginning, back when he hadn’t deserved it - he says as if he does now, which is laughable. She makes sure he has a room and food and loose clothes and a bed.

He sleeps on the floor anyway. 

\---

The girl is the only one who gives a damn about him. No one else wants him around. He doesn’t blame them. 

He doesn’t want to be around, either. 

\---

She is always brusque, and today is no exception, busting into his room without knocking and declaring that it’s time to go. 

He doesn’t ask where. He doesn’t stand from the floor, either. 

“I’m sick of your moping,” she huffs, and then she uses her connection to him and to the Force to gently push him to his feet. 

He follows her to the Falcon. His father’s ship. His father, who he killed without a second thought. 

Well. The second thoughts are coming now. Second, third, fourth, and enough to overwhelm him. 

He doesn’t like to think.

No one else is on the ship but the girl and the droid. No one else cares enough about the poor sad broken murderer - but it’s okay, he feels guilty! - to do anything for him. He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t know why she bothers, either, only that she does, that she pilots the Falcon all by herself with grim determination while he simply lays in the bunk that used to belong to his father.

He mopes some more.

\---

She drags him around like a child. He doesn’t resist. He sleeps through the flight, but she wakes him when she lands and she drags him down the ramp.

They’re on Ahch-To. 

The air rolls over him, damp and salty, and chilled to the point where he shivers. It’s real cold, not the weird emotional kind he has been dealing with. 

“Ydra!” the girl shouts, halfway between a prayer and a demand. Nothing happens, so she shouts that same word. 

“What?” demands a rough voice, popping their head out of the hut that he knows, somehow, used to belong to his uncle. 

She takes him by the shoulders and thrusts him towards the stranger. “Ydra, I have a student for you.”

“No.” They begin to close the door. 

“Ydra, this is -”

“I know who he is,” they snap. He feels himself wilt, which earns a raised eyebrow. “Why bother?”

“He didn’t die on Exegol.”

His voice raspy after weeks of disuse, he adds, “She wouldn’t let me.”

That earns a laugh from the stranger. “No, death would be too kind and easy for you, little Space Prince.” They sigh. “Fine. Leave him here. I make no promises.”

The girl left with a final goodbye, her soft eyes hurting worse than any blow he’d ever taken. He remembers the feeling of her lips on his, wanting it just once before he died. 

But he didn’t die. 

And it had been a fluke. She has her pilot, and her defector, and he is just a pet project. Now passed on to someone else. 

The someone in question snorts. “She’s always been too soft.”

He can’t help but agree.

\---

Rey said this person would train him, but they’ve done nothing of the sort. 

(He can only think of her as such once she’s gone.) 

They haven’t even introduced themself, though he gathered “Ydra” was a name that Rey had been calling and he supposes that it probably belongs to them. He hasn’t introduced himself, either, but then, they said they know him. He supposes they must. 

He isn’t sure how anyone could not know him, at this point.

It is what he wanted, but not in the way he had wanted it. They never use either name, his chosen or his mother’s gift - neither of which he’s sure he has any right to or desire of - but instead they call him “Little Space Prince.” It feels like it should be mocking, despite their voice holding no mockery, but he can’t even be mad about it.

How far he has fallen. 

Ydra has him sleep on the floor. It’s not unfamiliar. They give him blankets and a pillow, and he sleeps against the cold ground and he shivers. Sometimes, they throw a second blanket on him. It helps a little.

Ydra also has him cook, and clean, and meditate with them. He feels less of a student and more of a housekeeper, albeit one who meditates.

“You will never be a great man,” they tell him over dinner. 

He shrugs. He knows this.

“In fact, you will never even be a good man.” That one stings. “The weight of your crimes tips the balance forever away from your favor. You have unfathomable numbers of deaths on your hands.”

He nods. 

“Will you try anyway?” they ask. He blinks, unsure what they mean. “To be a good man.”

He considers. He does not want to be Kylo Ren anymore. But he is not Ben Solo, either. 

“Stupid boy. They are all you,” they say, and he realizes he’s spoken this sentiment aloud. “Do you want to do good things, tomorrow?”

He thinks, and slowly, he nods. They smile at him for the first time since he’s arrived, and it makes him feel warm inside. 

“And  _ that _ is what matters. Not redemption, but the best I can offer: penance.” 

\---

“Training” begins the next morning. Ydra makes him rise at dawn, and they eat simple porridge for breakfast. Then, Ydra leads him outside and stands in front of him. 

“Kneel,” they demand.

His temper flares. An old thing, a thing he thought he’d lost. He kneels before no one.

“ _ Kneel _ .” They repeat themself, insistent, and put a hand on his head. 

He kneels. 

“Press your forehead to the dirt.” 

He does not. He stares at them, teeth gritted, and scowls. He hates them. He hates everything, Rey and the Pilot and Snoke and the Defector and the Knights and Hux and his mother and -

He feels a stirring in his gut, pulling him downwards. Below the island. 

He resists.

Ydra smiles at him, amused, and walks away.

\---

“What was that?”

“There is a cave below. It is...special.”

“Special?”

“It teems with the darkness, but it is so much more.”

\---

The next morning is the same. 

“Kneel.” He does so. “Press your forehead to the dirt.” 

He resists, again, but he pays attention to the hatred in his gut. Analyzes it as one might an interesting insect. 

Ydra smiles. “Good.”

He doesn’t know what they know, or how they know it, only that they always know more than he wants them to.

\---

The third morning comes.

“Kneel.” He does so. “Press your forehead to the dirt.” 

He debates, this time. They have been...not kind, exactly, but accommodating. They feed him and clothe him and don’t act like he is anything but a murderer trying to be better. That’s what always hurts the most about Rey’s eyes: she sees a man that doesn’t exist, and may well never. 

He could trust them. Could he?

Ydra leaves before he decides.

\--- 

On the fourth morning, he is not awoken by his companion. It is a porg screaming at his window that rouses him, the sun already high. A bowl of porridge sits on the table, but Ydra is nowhere in sight. 

He goes outside. He kneels.

He does no more.

\---

Again, he wakes up alone. Again by a porg. Again there is porridge, and somehow, something inside him twinges. He...misses Ydra. He has not seen them for a few days now. He was growing used to not being alone.

He feels a downwards tug again. He pushes it aside. 

Outside, there is Ydra. Kneeling. Their forehead pressed in the dirt.

He says nothing, but he does it too.

\---

When the next morning comes, it is Ydra who wakes him. He feels more relieved than he wants to. 

“Kneel.” He does so. “Press your forehead to the dirt.” He does. “Good.”

He doesn’t mean to glow under their praise. But it strikes him, suddenly, how starved for validation he is. 

How pathetic.

Ydra’s lips curl into a smile. “Not pathetic. Human.”

Human. An interesting word. One not often applied to him, not for many years. Monster was often the term of choice. 

“No monster. Just a man.” He can’t see their face, but he wonders if he imagines the sorrow in their voice. “Just a man who made a lot of bad decisions.”

Bad decisions. He had a list of those, miles long.

“Name them,” Ydra directs. “Start at the beginning.”

But he cannot. It hurts too much to think of them, the kind of hurt that makes him angry and defensive and makes the downward pull take hold of his whole body.

He doesn’t want to think. 

Ydra shrugs. “Tomorrow, then.”

\---

“What did you want?”

“To rule the galaxy.”

“Why?”

“For power.”

“No. Why?”

Silence.

\---

He kneels. His forehead goes to the dirt. And when Ydra says to remember, he does.

He starts with the first time he ever heard Snoke in his head, because that’s the real beginning, long ago. He was a child then - a child who trusted. Then, he continues, through Luke’s betrayal, through the indescribable rage he felt, to the people he killed, to the three he didn’t.

He thinks about being a teenager, old enough to know better, and doing it anyway. He thinks about wanting to rule the universe.

It had been stupid.

He knows that now. Ydra smiles at him, and he thinks they know too. Well, they must.

He thinks about everything Snoke made him do.

Ydra shakes their head. “No.” 

The things Snoke told him to do. He had chosen to follow.

He gets defensive again. Shuts down. He lifts his head and he snaps at them, demanding why they’re doing these stupid exercises. 

They never break their serene composure. “I know it is hard to face your actions,” they say, neither sympathetic nor derisive. Simply matter-of-fact. “But you must.”

He stands and walks away.

\---

Ydra is gone the next morning. He tells himself he doesn’t care.

\---

He finds them at the water. He says nothing, just watches their naked form, clothes piled at their feet. There is black ink all across their golden skin, a sprawling recreation of the force tree that stretches down their legs and across their arms. 

It is beautiful, he thinks. 

There are also scars, over and under and around the tattoo. Some are smooth; some jagged. He knows some of them are lightsaber scars. 

It occurs to him that he knows nothing of Ydra’s past. When they aren’t trying to make him do whatever training they have in mind, they don’t talk much, especially not about themself. Meals are taken in silence. Meditation happens in silence. He goes to bed listening to the sound of their breathing.

They dip underwater. It seems cold; the temperature on Ahch-To never rises above what his mother had used to call “sweater weather.” 

His heart clenches. 

“I know you’re there,” they call, not turning around. “You may join me.”

He doesn’t. He just watches the graceful contours of their form dipping in and out of the water. 

It is intimate. The kind of intimacy he has never felt before. Jedi don’t form attachments. No one in the First Order cared to get close to him. Snoke pulled the strings. Even the kiss he’d shared on Exegol with Rey was just...a pale imitation of this.

“You think so loud,” Ydra tells him as they emerge from the water, bare to him. They have scars on their front, too, but no ink. 

He shields his thoughts constantly. He doesn’t understand…

“Don’t try to understand,” Ydra replies. “It doesn’t work on me. I know your soul.” A smile flickers across their lips. “I wouldn’t have let you stay if I didn’t.”

\---

He kneels. His forehead goes to the dirt. And when Ydra says to remember, he does.

It hurts. He remembers all the people he killed. Or maybe he doesn’t, but the number is overwhelming anyhow. Civilians, First Order groundlings, his generals…

Does the death of each weigh different, he wonders. Is a civilian heavier than a stormtrooper? Is a pilot heavier than a general? Surely Snoke carries no weight?

“It depends on you,” Ydra says. “There are moral absolutes, yes, but there is room for subjectivity.”

He decides he feels more guilty about killing random planet dwellers - or entire planets, actually - than he does for his generals. He allows himself a flush of pride for killing Snoke, for doing a good thing, before Ydra breaks in, “You did it to replace him.”

That sours him, but he keeps his forehead on the ground. The only person he’d ever helped dispatch, purely altruistically, was Palpatine. But no, even then...even then he was doing it for himself. He needs to think he’s worth something. That it’s worth moving forward. But he comes up with nothing.

“Keep counting your sins,” Ydra directs. “Lay them bare before the Force. And when you have spread yourself open across the dirt, then we’ll decide what to do about it.”

\---

Rey comes to visit. At first, he lets himself think it’s for him, that she misses him, but she has questions for Ydra. Of course. 

Ydra is a force user, he’s gathered that much, but he doesn’t understand how they could be helpful to Rey. But the two of them are inside the house and he is not, so he cannot know; he can only sit on the grass and try to meditate. 

The two emerge and he pops one eye open, curiosity bubbling up inside him - and then he remembers why he needed to run from Rey, because she has those eyes on him again. He focuses on Ydra instead, because they look at him with only Knowing, and while it may not feel good, it is easier. 

“Show her,” Ydra directs. 

He doesn’t understand. 

“Kneel.” Oh. They cannot be serious. They cannot mean for him to do this in front of the girl. To show her himself laid low, laid bare on the ground. His pride won’t allow it. He has not fallen that far.

For the first time, he hears Ydra in his mind, like a caress. “Your pride gains you nothing,” they whisper. “Show her your progress. Kneel.”

He stares reproachfully at them, glaring. He doesn’t uncross his legs. Rey has a look of impatience on her face, and then she jerks him around with the Force, pushing him to his knees. His face burns.

“No.” Ydra shakes their head, pushing Rey’s arm down. He sinks back to sit. “He must choose it, else it means nothing.” They shrug. “Let him be.” They walk away.

Rey looks at him with frustration and disappointment and compassion and pity and he rips his gaze away, towards the dirt, counting pebbles in front of him. He was in love with her, once, when he was a different man. Or at the very least, the idea of her. But now she just...hurts.

She stays for lunch. He prepares it wordlessly and serves the two of them, then sits outside and eats on a rock.

\---

He wakes up alone again. It feels like a punishment. 

“Not everything is about you,” they whisper from wherever they are. Ydra is amused. He reaches outwards to see if he can find them and he does, on the beach, so he goes down to meet them and watch their beautiful skin and their chrome colored hair. They’ve let it loose today, out of the usual patchwork of braids across their head, and it streams like water itself. 

“Do you seek to flatter me, Space Prince?” they demand, still amused, and they turn to face him. They are beautiful. 

He shakes his head. It is not flattery, merely fact. 

“Do you seek to court me?” They raise a single eyebrow, teasing, and he feels himself flush. Scowling, he buries his face in his knees. 

He refuses to think about it because he knows they will hear it, but he also is afraid of the answer. He knows in his heart that he doesn’t deserve love; it’s ridiculous and pathetic enough the way he seeks Ydra’s approval. 

He doesn’t hear them approach, only feels the hand in his hair. He doesn’t look up.

They’ve never touched him before.

“I give you the best I can offer,” they say, and then they glide away. 

\---

His back hurts. He misses a bed. 

“Earn it,” they reply, and he doesn’t realize it’s in response to that thought until he sees them glancing between him and the only bed in the hut.

It’s a terrifying thought.

They go outside and he follows. They don’t say anything, simply kneel, and he follows again. He presses his forehead to the dirt before they do, and he thinks. 

He thinks about the deaths again, because Ydra doesn’t seem to be satisfied with what he’s already done. 

“It’s not about my satisfaction,” they whisper in his mind, and they caress again, gently prying. He doesn’t want it to open - doesn’t want it to spill all the way out. He fears there will be nothing left inside him. 

Perhaps there won’t. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. 

He lets them pull, and he remembers people he didn’t know he recalled, children and villagers, people from the old life. He feels the moment he cut down Lor San Tekka, and then he does it again, and again. The man says he is better than this. He clearly isn’t. 

He pulls his head up, breathing heavily, and he weeps. Certainly not intentionally, but he does. Ydra doesn’t rush to hold him like he thinks Rey would, but they don’t look at him with fear or pity or reproach the way anyone else would. They just let him be, and they watch. A testament to his fallen state. 

“Do you want to be better than that?” they ask, finally outside of his head again. 

He nods. He does.

“Then that’s what matters.” Ydra smiles at him, then, a rare soft and caring smile. “You will never be a great man. You will never even be a good man. But you can be a better man.”

\---

Days blur together as he repeats the process. Kneel. Forehead to the dirt. Remember. 

He comes to mourn each loss, apologize to the universe for something he can never make up for. He counts the number of families he’d destroyed because he wasn’t happy with his own. He counts the number of stormtroopers he’d cut down in a fit of rage. 

“A tantrum,” Ydra corrects wryly. 

It’s unbecoming, but he can’t really argue the point.

He remembers the pilot, taking whatever he wanted from that brain. He remembers a time before, when he and the pilot were friends. The man had never been afraid of him until that moment; he hadn’t realized it was a blessing until it was far too late. 

He thinks of the defector he cut down, who lived, somehow, and he’s not sure if that’s better or worse. He thinks of the girl and the way he made her life hell. 

He thinks of his father, falling off a bridge; his uncle, vanishing before him; his mother, blinking out of existence like an imploding star. These are on his hands as well. 

Finally, finally, he reaches the end, he thinks. He can see every name, every memory spreading out in a patchwork quilt across the dirt. It is more agony than he thought he could bear, and the guilt and the shame are eating him alive. 

“You’re forgetting someone.”

He whirls on them, frustrated beyond all belief. Force, he will never be enough for them, will he? 

“Who?” he demands. He cannot handle another name, one more addition on the list; he is at carrying capacity for self-loathing.

“You.”

That stops him. “Me?”

“You ruined your own life, too. You took away your chances at being a great man, or even a good man. You chose wrong, over and over and over.” Ydra shrugs. “Perhaps you owe yourself an apology, too.”

They leave it in his hands. Every word they say is presented as simple fact, but in the end, the choice is his. 

He shakes his head. He’s not ready for that, yet. 

Ydra shrugs again. He wonders if it is possible to rile them, phase them. They simply smile at that, and he knows they heard the thought. “We will work with what we have.”

\---

They let him sit in his guilt and shame for twelve days. He barely eats or sleeps, and he eschews all comfort. He simply sits outside, meditating.

“Moping,” Ydra corrects. “Now I see what Rey meant.”

“I am a monster,” he replies, not opening his eyes. “I deserved to die.”

“Death is too easy for you.” They step closer, and closer still - he’s become good at sensing where they are, the same way they can him - and then they take his chin in their hand. “You are not a monster, my little Space Prince. Just a man who made a lot of terrible choices. I let you sit here for as long as I did so you could suffer, and now I stop this because it is time to move past the suffering.”

They hold his hand and lead him inside. They make him a meal. They pat his head gently. And then they tuck him into their bed and tap his forehead. It is the most they’ve ever touched him. 

“Sleep.” 

He doesn’t want to, but he does, and it is blessedly dreamless.

\---

“What did you want?”

“To rule the galaxy.”

“Why?”

“For power.”

“No. Why?”

Silence. A deep breath. “Admiration. Attention. Fear and adoration. Control.”

“Did it work?”

“For a time.”

“Was it as good as you’d hoped?”

Silence. 

\---

Ydra lets him sleep in the bed now. Or more accurately, they force him to. He’d be perfectly fine on the floor as penance, but they don’t let him. 

“Your self-flagellation is unbecoming and useless,” they chide. 

They make him eat. They make him take care of himself. They don’t take care of him - no, that would be too much. That is not their job and both he and Ydra know that. But they make him take care of himself. 

\---

Rey comes again.

He kneels. He shows her.

\---

He has learned that Ydra is always at the water if he wakes alone. He has also learned they tend to be waiting for him there, and they will smile at him when he comes. 

It is embarrassing, but this is possibly the most fulfilling thing. He can’t remember the last time anyone was something other than angry or terrified to see him. 

Today, he joins them. He leaves his undershorts on in some facsimile of modesty than gets him laughed at by the completely naked being beside him, and he wades tentatively off the coast. The water is cold and saltier than anything he’s ever experienced. It is new.

It is good, he thinks. 

And then he is being dunked underwater and he hears a laugh as he sputters and before he can think about what he’s doing his hand is out, his Force around Ydra’s neck. 

They do not look afraid.

“Do it, then.” They stare at him evenly, though he knows they can barely breathe. “Make a choice.”

He drops them roughly and stalks away, caught between fury and shame. He has never raised a hand against them before now; he has never felt an urge to. The feeling of shock and humiliation had dragged up a person in him he’d hoped had died on Exegol.

“Stupid boy,” Ydra whispers in his brain. “They are all you.”

\---

“Vader got to die,” he mourns. Jealous. 

_ “You are not Vader. You never have been.” _

\---

Ydra will not speak to him. They will not let him into the house, standing in the doorway with their full body and staring him down. It is clear they are waiting for an apology.

He has never been good at apologies. 

“Try anyway,” they shoot back inside his skull, the words rattling around as proof that they’re still there, still listening.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For attacking you.”

“Mm. Why?”

This one confuses him. “Why what?”

“Why are you sorry?”

He scrunches up his eyebrows. “Because I feel guilty.”

“No. Give me a better one, something that matters.”

“Because I don’t really want to hurt you.”

“But you almost did.”

He snorts. They are insufferable. “I almost did, and I hate that, because I -” He can’t finish the sentence, the “I care about you” that almost slips out, but they’re in his head and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t say it because they hear it anyway.

Their lips quirk up just barely. “Go on.”

“You have been good to me,” he continues, “and I don’t want to repay your kindness with violence.” There is still some honor left in him. He likes to think he’s rebuilding it, piece by piece.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“What?” he asks again. He has never had to give an apology this thorough before. 

“Then no one taught you properly. How are you going to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

He stops. He thinks. He thinks for a good while. And then, though it pains him to admit out loud, “I need to work on self control.”

They nod, satisfied. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

\---

“Your temper has not gone away.” 

He snorts. His uncle always told him that his anger would be his failure as a Jedi.

“There’s nothing wrong with anger.”

That stops him. That one is new. 

Now it’s Ydra’s turn to snort. “What, you think Rey has never been angry? You think she wasn’t angry while you fought, together or against each other?” They shake their head. “Forget the Jedi. There’s no such thing as a bad emotion, only one that controls you. You let your anger control you.”

He controls every emotion.

“No, every emotion controls you.”

His temper flares at that, but he doesn’t let himself do anything, because that would only prove their point. 

“Good boy. But when you are sad, you sit in sadness. When you are angry, you act rashly.” They offer him a small smile. “When you are content...that is good.”

He can’t argue but he hates that they’re right. In another life, he would’ve destroyed things to placate his anger; here, the thought only serves as evidence.

“Be angry,” they direct. “It’s okay. But do not hurt others because of it.”

He hurts others so it doesn’t hurt him, though.

“Perhaps it is time for you to shoulder the pain. And in time it will not hurt so much.”

\---

Rey comes again. She takes him back to the Resistance base for a few days, largely against his will. 

He’s not sure why. She says people miss him; he knows they don’t. 

He sleeps on the floor again, arranging his blankets so it is like Ydra’s house. He makes porridge for breakfast with the same spices they use. He meditates on his actions, lays them bare to the Force.

On the second day he thinks about what Ydra said, how no one ever taught him properly to apologize, and he goes to find the defector.

Finn. That’s the name he’s chosen now. 

Finn looks completely neutral - neither happy nor unhappy to see him. Finn waits, questioning, and he takes a deep breath before he speaks. 

“I am sorry for slicing your back open.” He runs through the things Ydra listed for an apology. “I know you were trying to do the same thing I was, taking care of Rey. I don’t use a lightsaber anymore so it won’t happen again.”

Finn snorts at him in disbelief. After it becomes clear he has no more to say, Finn nods. “Okay. Cool. Thanks, I guess.” Finn seems unsatisfied, but he doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know what else to say.

He goes to find Rey next, apologizes to her for not listening to all the times she tried to save him until it was too late. He promises her he will listen to her now. She is delighted. 

Then he finds the pilot. Poe. The boy he used to play with when he was Ben.

“You’re all of them,” he hears Ydra’s voice echo in his head. 

Poe opens the door and then promptly shuts it in his face.

“I’m here to apologize,” he says. 

“I don’t kriffing care.” Poe does not open the door again. “I don’t care what Rey says, you can’t be redeemed.”

He doesn’t seek redemption; he knows that’s not for him. He is simply doing penance. 

“I -” he begins. 

“Go away, Kylo.”

He wants to say that’s not his name anymore. But he knows that will lead to questions, and he cannot say his name is Little Space Prince now. They won’t understand. 

He waits a long time. Poe ignores the next few knocks. He sits on the floor. Poe does not emerge. 

Finally, he leaves to eat something, realizing it is a lost cause. 

He misses Ydra more than he expected to.

\---

When Rey returns him to Ahch-To, he recounts his experiences to Ydra.

“Not everyone will accept your apology. That’s their right.”

“Why?”

“Some wounds take more than just words and intentions to heal. No one owes you anything, my little Space Prince.”

Snoke had once told him that the universe owed him everything. Anything he wanted, he deserved. 

Ydra’s words are at odds with his old teacher, so they come as a surprise, but he trusts them more than Snoke. Probably more than anyone, at this point. 

He doesn’t say that he missed them out loud. There’s no point; they know.

“I missed you, too.” Those words are a surprise too, and he finds them leveling a tender gaze at him. Then they’re off to the water, leaving him to hurry behind.

\---

Ydra’s new plan is to build up his patience. This involves spending all day annoying him, and criticizing him any time he snaps back.

He does not like this exercise. 

\---

He is getting really sick of hearing them in his head. It seems awfully one-sided.

“You haven’t even tried to go the other way,” Ydra replies out loud, not opening their eyes. Then they throw another annoying thought at him.

They have a point. He realizes, suddenly, that he hasn’t, and he can’t think why. He attempts to surge in like a wave, invade and explore and learn everything, but it’s like running into a brick wall. 

“That wasn’t very polite.” Ydra smiles wryly. “Try again. Maybe use the door this time instead of trying to kick down the wall.”

He grits his teeth. They’re never particularly gentle with his mind - except they are, when he thinks about it. They’re annoying but they’re gentle, soft, and they don’t pry any more than the situation needs. 

He takes a deep breath, and tries again.

This time, there’s no resistance. But it’s not easy to make sense of, either. He sees the forests of Yavin 4, he sees the Force Tree there that the pilot - that Poe - that the family had planted. He sees Ydra for just an instant, under that tree, the ink on their bare back dipping below their clothes and mimicking the life before them. Their age is unclear, but he supposes he doesn’t know that even now. 

He sees swirls of lights and colors that don’t still to coherent pictures, and he hears incomprehensible whispers around him. He feels something holding him, and it makes him feel safe. Calm. Cared for.

“That’s the Force,” Ydra tells him, though he can’t actually see them. Still, it’s the experience of hearing them speak - this time, it is him who’s in their head.

He’s been in countless people’s heads. This is different.

“Because I want you here.”

He sees bright fruits he doesn’t recognize and the gentle blur of hyperspace. “None of this makes sense,” he complains. 

He can feel the shrug. “This is my head, little Space Prince. I never said it was an easy puzzle.”

He wanders. He moves ahead and finds...himself, climbing off of Rey’s ship. But this time, he feels what Ydra feels. Frustration, amusement, curiosity, acceptance. They know who he is, but they will let him stay. They will let him try.

For the first time in his life, it doesn’t hurt to see himself through someone else’s eyes.

\---

He doesn’t realize Ydra’s moved onto jealousy until he sees an image of Finn, Rey, and Poe, tangled and kissing and he  _ aches _ to feel something like that.

“How can you possibly do that?” he snaps.

They smirk. It’s a feeling. “I can control some of what you see in my head. Give you my memories.”

He’s been spending a lot of time in Ydra’s head lately. They have never denied him since the first time, and he is always gentle. But they use this as training, too. It vexes him. 

Then he stumbles upon a familiar sight - Ydra, naked in the water - but there is someone with them, some girl he doesn’t recognize and Ydra kisses hot trails down her neck and god, he’s jealous. He’s so damn jealous. 

“Enough!” he snaps, but he doesn’t do anything else. He’s getting better at that. It’s easier, in Ydra’s head, to not do things; he doesn’t have much he can do. There is nothing he can destroy here. If he rages and screams, the scene won’t change. 

All he can do is watch, and ache, and wonder how much of the longing is for any kind of love and how much is specific. 

Does he want Ydra to love him? Yes, he realizes, and he knows in realizing they hear it too, but he doesn’t know what sort of love. Just...love.

It’s a shame he doesn’t deserve love.

\---

He never wakes up before they do. He’s tried a couple times, but it doesn’t work. Today is no exception, but he knows they’re at the water. He knows they’re waiting. 

He sees them in the water, naked as usual, but he remembers the girl. She was beautiful too.

“So what are you going to do with that?” they ask, not turning to face him, and he shrugs, studying the ink across their back. 

He could kiss them, try to stake some kind of claim, but that would be stupid. He has no claim, only longing. He’d probably also get smacked.

Ydra doesn’t comment on those thoughts, thank the Force. 

He joins them in the water. “What was her name?” he asks after much deliberation; the question feels sandy in his mouth.

Ydra smiles. He reaches out and feels that they’re proud of him. 

“Padmé.” He startles. “Not your grandmother, but named for her. She was Zelosian.” Ydra chuckles. “I’ve always loved nature.”

He doesn’t know what that means. 

Ydra tuts. “My, what did that Supreme Leader of yours even teach you?” 

He finds himself in their head without trying, on a grassy planet. “Zelos II,” they tell him. He sees people - they look human, but they’re not, according to Ydra. Zelosians. Plant-like in nature. 

He sees the beautiful girl again. Padmé. Named for his grandmother, the Queen of Naboo. She looked nothing like the holovids of his grandmother - for one thing, her hair was short and green - but he supposed the name was supposed to be more symbolic than representative. 

“Names are important, my Little Space Prince.”

He knows. He doesn’t know his anymore, but then he does, too. 

Little Space Prince. 

Maybe one day he will earn another name, but for now, this is enough.

\---

Rey brings him back to the base again. This time, Ydra comes with them.

The first two days are absolute agony for them; he can tell by the way the discomfort radiates. 

“When was the last time you were around this many people?” he asks. 

They wince. “Long ago.”

He stays in his room with them. They refused separate quarters, so now they sleep in his bed and he sleeps on the floor. He did that anyway. 

“Can’t you shield yourself?” he asks. He’s doing it right now. Rey, too, he can tell.

They wince again. “It’s not that simple.” 

He makes them porridge and spices it their way. He brings them fruit from the mess. He keeps them company. 

They smile at him gratefully. He has never seen them weak before. He is filled with the strangest urge to protect them. 

This makes Ydra laugh. “I am not yours,” they tell him. “If anything, you are mine.”

He agrees with the second part, but something about the first does not ring true. 

On the third day, they manage to leave the room. He walks them to the mess for lunch like the world’s moodiest shadow. 

It’s interesting. Everyone seems to be drawn to Ydra, whether by knowing them or curiosity. He supposes he can’t fault the others. They are beautiful. 

“Do you seek to flatter me, little Space Prince?” they chuckle under their breath. 

But as drawn to Ydra as people are, he repulses the masses. And Ydra will not leave his side. 

“You’ll get into trouble on your own,” they reply simply, but with a coy smile that makes it feel like less than the whole truth. 

The Mechanic - Rose - braves it and sits at the table with the two of them. She pays him no mind, focusing all her attention on Ydra, but she is here. Then Finn follows, and there are four people at the table. Finn acknowledges him. 

He tries on a smile. It is awkward. He’s unused to it, even after all this time with Ydra.

“It looks good anyway,” they say in his head, and it feels like a caress. 

After they eat, Rey summons Ydra. There is a child with her. 

“He’s from Canto Bight,” Rey explains. “His name is Temiri, and he’s Force-Sensitive.”

“Hello,” Ydra greets. 

The boy - Temiri - smiles bashfully. 

“I want you to take him with you and start his training on Ahch-To,” Rey declares. “I’d do it myself, but I’m still tracking down others.”

He startles. “There’s - there’s no way you trust me with a child,” he protests. 

Ydra shrugs. “If you endanger him in any way, I will kill you,” they whisper in his head, and the threat rings true. It is a promise. “But you won’t.”

“Of course I do,” Rey replies, looking at him with those believing eyes that hurt so much more. Ydra’s response is better.

The base has a party that night, or something, and everyone wants Ydra to come, which means he comes too. The boy is elsewhere, packing. They leave tomorrow, and there’s no use a child coming to these parties. 

No one talks to him but Rey and Ydra. There is a bonfire, and some alcohol he’s never tasted before, and Ydra’s hair shines in the light. They’re wearing a robe of the same color, and it shines too. 

“You’re staring,” they whisper in his mind, a laugh accompanying it. 

He flushes. He can’t help it. A braver man would’ve said something like “can’t help staring” or “you’re too beautiful,” but he is not a braver man. Ydra’s continuing acceptance is everything to him; rejection would be unmanageable. 

“So unmanageable you go back to the dark side?” He could feel their eyebrows raise without seeing them. 

Force, no. He just...it’d hurt. A different kind of hurt than all their stupid exercises. 

One he is less sure he could heal from.

“Hush, little Space Prince.” They turn and put a hand on his shoulder. “So long as you try to be a better man, I will not reject you.”

\---

He makes another bed. 

The first night, Temiri sleeps in their bed. Ydra and he stay outside, meditating. He falls asleep in the grass and he hears them, in his dream, singing softly. 

The next day, he gets up and without any nudging, he goes to gather wood and make a bedframe. 

The Force makes it easier; maybe that’s cheating. Maybe he should have to chop and sweat and rip his hands raw for this child. It wouldn’t be enough. 

It will never be enough, he’s starting to realize. Really, truly realize. He will be haunted until the end of his days, and the scars he left on the universe won’t care. 

“You’re so dramatic,” Ydra laughs. “You’re just making a bed.”

He’s just making a bed. 

The frame isn’t too bad, but when it comes to a mattress, he’s at a loss. Ydra shows him how to weave with a flip of their fingers, and he follows, taking old, dry grasses and making a pallet. The mattress is stuffed with discarded Porg feathers and down, and Ydra takes it inside to Temiri. 

He does not follow. He is afraid to be near the child. He does not deserve it. 

“Come,” Ydra beckons. 

He stays, resolute. He feels their shrug. 

He is not ready yet. 

\---

He sits with Temiri under a tree and they meditate. The child is quiet, and good at the task.

The child keeps popping one eye open to look at him, though, with unguarded curiosity, studying his scar and his nose and his calloused hands. He’s not sure how to feel about it.

He feels Ydra smiling at them.

\---

Ydra takes him down to the cave. They tell Temiri to meditate, and leave the boy in the house; the boy was a slave, so disobedience is an unfathomable concept. It makes Ydra sad, he can tell. 

The cave is dark and terrifying. It stirs that place in his gut, and he feels angry and afraid and twisted up all at once. 

“I can’t,” he whispers. 

Ydra will not push him into this. That is not their way.

“I can’t,” he says again, but then he takes a step forward. And another one. 

He is in the cave and he sees nothing. He hears Snoke’s laughter, and another, deeper sound, one he doesn’t recognize. It shows him the galaxy laid low before him, flaming. 

_ “You did this.” _

He staggers a bit, but he does not fall. “Yes. I did.”

_ “Did it give you what you wanted?” _

“No.”

_ “So do more.” _

“No,” he says again, shaking slightly. “I don’t want this anymore.”

_ “But you did.” _

He inclines his head. “I did.” He cannot run from it, deny it. 

_ “Do you really think you can change?” _

No. Yes. Maybe. 

He thinks of Ydra. “I already have.”

_ “Foolish boy. Do you think you’re in love? Is that what this is?” _

He shook his head. “No.” 

_ “They cannot make you a great man.” _

“I will never be a great man. I will never be a good man. But I can be a better man than I was before, and I already am.”

_ “You can never be redeemed.”  _ There is a hiss of displeasure.  _ “You still have the dark in you.” _

“I always will,” he concedes. He knows it won’t go away; Ydra never told him so, but they didn’t have to. “But that doesn’t mean that’s all I can be.”

He hears their voice then, in his head again. “It teems with the darkness, but it is so much more.” They’d been talking about the cave, but perhaps, they’d been talking about him, too. 

_ “I can help you put it back together,” _ the dark whispers.  _ “Everyone will love you. You can bring order, peace. You can be their savior.” _

He shakes his head. He has never been the savior type. “I will never be a good man. You cannot make me a good man. But I want to be better, and I can only do that without you.”

\---

Ydra meets him, gasping, at the spot where they usually swim. He is soaked, his clothes clinging and he shivers, but their smile is radiant. 

“I’m proud of you,” they tell him, and he glows, too.

“You understand this is not the end?” They ask, handing him a towel. Gently, they brush his wet hair out of his face. 

He nods. It isn’t the end. There is no end. He knew, standing in that cave, that it was something he can never escape from. 

But he is still going to try. 

\---

He gets angry. He screams. He scares Temiri. 

Ydra sends him out.

He comes back. He apologizes, first to them, then the boy. What he did, why he’s sorry, how he’s going to prevent it from happening again.

The cave is displeased.

\---

“What did you want?”

“To rule the galaxy.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted control. I wanted people to fear me.”

“Did it work?”

“For a time.”

“Was it as good as you’d hoped?”

“No.”

“And now?”

“Now, I would rather be cared for.” 

\---

The first time he sees Temiri float, he feels as proud as if the boy was his own padawan. He hoots and hollers and grins, and then he scoops the boy up out of the air and spins around and heaps praise. 

He feels something rolling off of Ydra that feels a lot like love. The best they can offer.

“He doesn’t know you as Ben Solo,” they say later, while the boy sleeps. “He doesn’t know you as Kylo Ren. He simply knows you as my Space Prince, the man who built him a bed and taught him Force tricks.”

And that is a beautiful feeling. It’s not like Rey, who sees not Kylo but some version of Ben she thinks he could be. It’s not Poe, replacing the child Ben with the monster Kylo in his mind. 

It’s simply a child, observing him as he is, and finding it good enough. Seeing Ydra’s Space Prince. Not redeemed, but penitent. 

“I will never be a good man,” he says to them, “but I am a better one.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rebecca Roanhorse said it absolutely beautifully in _Resistance Reborn_ , talking about former imperials. "Not Redemption. Penance."  
> This story wouldn't leave me alone. Dying for "redemption" left me emotionally unsatisfied, but I didn't want to write him a redemption arc of my own, either. Sometimes there are evils you can't redeem yourself from, but that leaves the very interesting question of "where do you go from there?" And he chooses to move forward. To move towards the light. Rey forgives him for everything; Poe forgives him for nothing. And both are valid responses.   
> Anyway, this was a really enjoyable character study/writing exercise. I hope you all enjoyed.


End file.
